


Red Right Hand of the Rift

by MyBlueSkye



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:49:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyBlueSkye/pseuds/MyBlueSkye
Summary: Davius Sebastian survived the Civil War. He returned home to Riften a changed man, yes. But he survived. And the last thing he expected to find within those ramshackle gates was someone like Mjoll the Lioness. Can a man who bested Maven Black-Briar and climbed the ranks of the Thieves Guild with the grace of a master hope to capture the heart of a woman like Mjoll?





	1. All the Morning Glows Anew

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a roleplay profile I created on the Tamriel Vault. It’s based on, sort of, Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders, and two songs from the show: Red Right Hand, of course, and Breathless, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The whole thing was super fun to create and I love Davius like he’s my own. Check it out, and check out the rest of the Vault. It’s a fun place for Skyrim fans. 
> 
> https://tamrielvault.com/blogs/17345/5761/red-right-hand-of-the-rift-toc

[Red Right Hand of the Rift Roleplay Profile](https://tamrielvault.com/blogs/17345/5761/red-right-hand-of-the-rift-toc)

 

Maul’s ridiculous glower faded from Davius’s vision, but its effect on Davius’s temper didn’t fade so easily. Between the new jarl’s watchdog and the shakedown at the gates, Davius’s first day back in Riften hadn’t started on a good foot. He stopped before the bridge to the marketplace and took a deep breath.

Those canals…as long as he lived, Davius wouldn’t forget the smells – stagnant water and warm tar and the ever-present hint of fish.

“What did Jarl Black-Briar say about the thief you caught last night? Caught in our own home, no less?”

Hairs on the back of Davius’s neck rose at the mention of thieves, and he looked out of the corner of his eye at the pair talking in the middle of the bridge. Shortish man with the unmistakable look of a former warrior slightly gone to seed. But the woman who stood at his side wasn’t unmistakably… anything. At first glance, all he saw was dented but shiny armor, a massive greatsword at her hip. And a whitening scar like the swipe of a beast’s claw below her left eye.

But he stared – and he knew he stared, but he couldn’t help it – a moment or two longer, and noticed nearly glowing blue-green eyes and hair the color of wheat in the morning sun. She smirked, and it was enough of a smile to lighten her face and wrinkle her tip-tilted, freckled nose.

Magnificent.

Davius stepped onto the bridge, and she looked up, meeting his eyes. “Hello,” she said, her cheeks plumping in a genuine smile, “haven’t seen you in town. Are you new to Riften?”

“I, ah…well,” he began, letting his gaze slide between the woman and the irritated-looking man at her side, “any town’ll be new to me. Just come back from the Legion.” He made a show of looking her up and down. “You look like you could hold your own in a battle. Did you fight?”

“I fight every day,” she said, and touched the weapons belt across her chest. Her face fell, and the sky seemed to darken along with her smile. “But my front is Riften. I don’t pretend to know if the Empire’s side was the right one, but their victory hasn’t been good for the town. Maven Black-Briar is a poor and corrupt excuse for a jarl, and the Thieves Guild…”

Davius leaned in closer. “What about the Thieves Guild?”

“I shouldn’t even call them a guild. More a rabble, really. Even the Dark Brotherhood follows some sort of code, or so I hear. But these thieves terrorize Riften every night. I found one in my kitchen yesterday, as brazen as you please, and they fight among each other, and we all get caught in the crossfire-“

She broke off with a little shake of her head. “Sorry, I could go on far too long. My name is Mjoll, and this,” she said, motioning toward the man glaring at Davius from behind her shoulder, “is Aerin.”

“Davius Sebastian,” he said, offering his hand to both of them in turn and holding Mjoll’s just a second too long, “pleased to meet you.” He cleared his throat and motioned to Maul, still staring across the bridge with flinty black eyes. “So, is he always so happy to meet new people?”

Mjoll and Aerin shared a knowing frown. “Maul is only happy when he has someone to threaten. Between the Black-Briars and the Thieves Guild-”

Mjoll smacked the railing in frustration. “Sorry, I said I wasn’t going to talk about-“

“No, it’s fine,” Davius said, and hefted his pack a little higher on his shoulder. “Actually, I agree completely. It sounds horrible. Sure not what I was expecting when I came through the gates.”

As though on cue, a flash of gold and auburn caught Davius’s attention and he looked out at the marketplace and then back to Mjoll with a tense smile. “Listen, I have to go, but I hope to see you around town, soon.”

Mjoll smiled again, her gaze flicking over his worn leather armor and shining ebony sword, and finally resting on his face. “Yes, soon.”

Davius walked off, his eyes hardening. Brynjolf stood near the corner of the Bee and Barb, beckoning with a lifted chin. After the gate-guard’s shakedown failed to work, he expected news of his arrival to spread quickly. Maybe not this quickly, but having an escort down to the cistern might be best.  

Time to get to work.

 

* * *

 

Mjoll‘s days in Riften ran on schedule – and a tight schedule at that. In the morning, promptly at eight, she left the house she shared with Aerin (he had the downstairs, she had the upstairs. They shared the kitchen) and walked to the marketplace. A breakfast of fresh, hot bread and coffee started her day. The remainder of the morning found her outside the gates, hunting for game and ridding the nearby woods of vermin.

A few days after meeting Davius on the boardwalk, Mjoll wondered if he’d left for good – she’d not seen him since he’d said goodbye and walked toward Marise’s stall. Riften did have its way of getting under people’s skin, but she’d imagined Davius a little different. Tougher. A former soldier, she’d hoped he’d be on her side. On Riften’s side. A help, even.

But maybe he’d changed his mind about staying. A surprising moue of disappointment curved into a scowl at the sight of the gate guards. They knew who she was and saw her cartfull of pelts and meat and ingredients, including several crates of skeever tails, steaming in the noonday sun. But still they hesitated to open the gates. She fumed. Then again, the whole town cowered under the thumb of the Thieves Guild and the Black-Briars. What did she expect?

By the time she lugged her cart to the marketplace and delivered the meat to Marise and Keerava, she’d bothered herself into an increasingly typical state of fury, imagining Maven Black-Briar face-down in a pit of sharp stakes, her smug, imperious grin bloody and ruined.

_Stop it, Mjoll. You’re better than that._

She did her best to quell that daydream on her walk to the smithy, but failed miserably until she saw who stood by the forge. There he was – Davius, looking like he’d been in a house fire. Or in a fight with a dragon, although she’d not seen dragons in The Rift for months. A metal coffer at his feet glowed, and he moved to pick it up, but Balimund knocked his hands out of the way and grabbed it, upending it over his forge with a roar.

Riften’s master smith looked for all the world like a Forsworn savage dancing around his forge, newly stoked flames soaring past market ceilings and arches. When the flames settled back down into sparkling embers, Mjoll made her way through the throng of cheering townspeople and parked her cart, her eyes shifting between Davius and Balimund

“I, ah…I know it’s not fire salts, but hopefully you’ll be able to put these pelts to good use. Especially now your forge has new life,” Mjoll said, and turned to Davius with a quick nod of greeting. How had he found the fire salts Balimund needed? They were nearly impossible to come by, she knew from fruitless months of experience.

“My lucky day all ‘round!” Balimund laughed and clapped Davius on the shoulder. “Ah, this lad. Warmed my heart as well as my forge, make no mistake. I thought for a while I’d have to shut down. Do you know I offered to pay him for finding the salts? I should, looks like he wrestled those atronachs and ripped out their hearts with his bare hands.”

Mjoll had to agree. Soot covered Davius’s face, and his leather armor was singed, as was part of his hair. “We all owe you a debt then. The loss of Balimund would have lessened our city, indeed.”

 _Lessened our city indeed?_ Mjoll cringed at the sound of her own voice. She didn’t talk like that. No one did.

Davius grinned and nodded, his eyes meeting Mjoll’s. Her stomach flip-flopped, and she tried not to stare. She’d never seen eyes that color before – blue, yes, but clear and icy as a mountain stream. “My pleasure,” he said, and tapped the hilt of the ebony sword at his hip. “And as for pay, I’ll take a sharpened sword over gold anytime. Do a much better job at keeping me alive.”

Mjoll watched Davius stroll across the bridge and wondered, not for the first time, where he was going. Where did he live? What did he do with his time, apart from wrestling fire atronachs? Who were his friends, his family?

Every day after that, she made a point of looking for Davius during her patrols – in the marketplace, the Bee and Barb, the Pawned Prawn, the Fishery – anywhere newcomers might find sustenance or goods or employment – but for days, he was nowhere to be found. What did he do all day, where did he go?

Who were his people?

One of those questions was answered several weeks later. Mjoll patrolled the small graveyard behind the Temple of Mara – a common place for unsavory deals to go down. And there he was, standing in an archway under a large crypt. Another man stepped into the torchlight beside him, and her heart sank – Brynjolf, a known thief and swindler of a particular nature. She knew he’d made off with the valuables of several Riften women, women who’d rather not say where their jewels and baubles had gone. Would rather their husbands not know who warmed their beds while they were away.

Brynjolf was an attractive man; Mjoll had to give the scamp his due, and she had a hard time feeling sorry for women who’d dupe the men they’d sworn to love and care for. But he was still a thief, and if Davius spent his time with such a man…

Davius tensed suddenly and looked her way. Torchlight turned his blue eyes a fiery gold; he’d caught her watching. Well, that was her job, wasn’t it? She’d told him upfront she took care of Riften, protected her town from people…well, people like him, apparently. She gave a clipped nod and walked back toward the marketplace, anger bubbling up around the lump in her throat.

So the most interesting man in Riften in…oh, _ages_ , turned out to be a thief. Why should she care? She told herself it was because of her plans for the city. Aerin was a good friend and could hold his own in a fight, but his intellect and fortitude were no match for Maven Black-Briar. But Davius…

 _Davius._ She sighed with a little shake of her head. Unfortunately, pretty eyes and an adorably boyish grin couldn’t change a thief into a good man, she thought, her boots thumping a little louder than usual on the walkway leading back home. 


	2. Still Your Hands, and Still Your Heart

The next day, she tried not to look for Davius. She didn’t see him at the Bee and Barb where she’d stopped for breakfast and, unusually for her, a tankard of mead, but she couldn’t help noticing Keerava’s beautiful new ring – three sparkling amethysts set in gold.

Keerava dipped her head and murmured her thanks in response to Mjoll’s congratulations, but Talen-Jei had even more news to go with the tale of their wedding – the credit for the ring went to Davius. He’d found the flawless amethysts required for a traditional Argonian wedding band, and brought them back to Riften looking ‘quite the worse for wear,’ Talen-Jei said as he poured Mjoll’s mead, whispering so Keerava wouldn’t find out he hadn’t gone after them himself, as was also tradition.

Davius hadn’t even accepted payment for the service.

A few days later, Mjoll caught sight of Davius in the marketplace, carrying a large satchel. It looked like it weighed a ton, and was probably filled with stolen goods, she reminded herself, remembering how chummy he’d looked with Brynjolf.

Those amethysts were probably stolen, too.

But she never saw what the satchel contained, for he passed the whole thing to Grelka, unopened. Mjoll was close enough – admiring a gold necklace at Madesi’s jewelry stand – to hear the merchant’s exclamations of thanks.

“I wanted to make the trip myself, and I could have, under normal circumstances, but…”

Grelka let her voice trail off, but continued after a moment, her words flinty and clipped. “Look, I’m not trying to be offensive here. I’m not, but…the war’s been over, more than a year now. Shouldn’t all the soldiers, I don’t know, go home or something? All the fighting on the roads, and some of them – most of them Stormcloaks, but some Legion – attacking caravans and merchant wagons. It’s got to stop sometime, doesn’t it?”

“War went on so long, too many of us have nowhere left to go.” Mjoll couldn’t see Davius’s face, but he answered in low tones, and she could hear anger bubbling beneath his measured reply. “A home, a family…a job. Empire doesn’t care anymore, not now they’ve won. Those soldiers were doing the only thing they knew how to, and I’m not excusing it. But I am hoping to do something about it, at least here in The Rift. It’ll take time, though.”

Again, he refused payment.

It went on like that for weeks – one day she’d see Davius chopping wood for Balimund or passing potions and Septims to Riften’s beggars, or delivering crates of goods to one of the merchants. Next day, she’d see him with Brynjolf, or another of Riften’s known scoundrels. Doing nothing but standing and talking, far as she could see.

Every so often, though, she’d catch him watching her, his eyes following her across the boardwalk or down the stairs from the Keep. He’d smile and take a step toward her, like he wanted to talk. But Mjoll couldn’t stop picturing him in Guild leathers, turning that impossibly guileless smile on some wealthy woman who didn’t lock up her jewels while she slept. Or on Maven Black-Briar, over a big pile of candlelit gold.

With that image burning a hole in her brain, she’d turn on her heel, her face red and warm, and walk as fast as she could in the other direction. The fluster his presence seemed to cause wasn’t the only thing about Davius Mjoll couldn’t work out, and she wasn’t sure which bothered her more: butterflies in her stomach like a damned schoolgirl, or the fact that she had no idea what game Davius played.

Nothing fit, and she didn’t like pieces that didn’t fit. None of the questions revolving around the man had answers  –  what was he doing in Riften? Did he mean her city good, or ill? Was he a thief and a scoundrel, or one of the city’s protectors, like her?  

And then, one morning, she realized she’d not seen him for days. And then, weeks.

A month, and more.

She started to worry, spending more and more nights patrolling near the crypt he haunted with Brynjolf. More and more evenings at the Bee and Barb, drinking too much wine and trying to figure out why she cared about some thief she barely knew.

So he’d left Riften, like she thought he’d done in the first damned place. So what?  

“You’re nothing if not a creature of habit, Mjoll,” Keerava said one night, wiping out a goblet behind the bar, “and although we appreciate your custom, spending so much time in a tavern is not your habit.” The Argonian was too polite and well-mannered to inquire into Mjoll’s melancholy, but her face was open and inquiring, and Mjoll’s curiosity finally won out.

“What do you know about Davius? The ex-Legionnaire who came to town a few months ago, I mean,” she said, rubbing a nonexistent spot from the stem of her own goblet.

“Oh, that’s an interesting question. About a very interesting man,” Keerava said, her grin flashing. “What do you want to know?”

Mjoll’s heart beat faster. Of course Keerava knew about Davius. Keerava knew everything! Why hadn’t she asked the barmaid earlier? She tried to mask what seemed to be turning into a stupid crush behind banal curiosity. “Well, who is he? Where does he come from?”

“Right here. Davius is a Sebastian. His family’s Thieves Guild going back generations,” Keerava said, and chuckled at Mjoll’s appalled gasp. “It’s not as bad as you think. Or, maybe it is. Before the war, his parents helped lead the guild, and Riften was a different place when they were alive. Business was business. An enterprise, not just…local terrorism. Thanks to Davius, it’s getting better. Haven’t you noticed less crime lately? When’s the last time you caught a thief nosing around the marketplace at night? Or caught one picking their way into someone’s home?”

Mjoll stared into her goblet and frowned. It had been quiet, lately. Quiet enough that she’d gone outside the city looking for trouble on her nightly patrols, and found it – vampires, too close to the gates for comfort. She’d killed two of them with more than her usual effort, and one of their creepy black dogs.

But in the city? She’d caught only one thief in the past month or two, and he hadn’t been one of the usual suspects – ragged trousers, homemade lockpicks. Not a professional at all. “So, he’s Thieves Guild, then? If he is, why does he do so many…I mean, I see him helping-”

“Why does he do so much for Riften? Why does he care if he’s a low-down thief? Same reason he’s taken the Guild in hand. Killed the old Guildmaster, if rumor’s correct, and Maven Black-Briar’s none too happy about it. He was in her pocket, he was, and you know Maven – never happy until she has everything and we have nothing.”

Keerava tipped a green bottle above Mjoll’s goblet, watching sweet red wine splash into its depths. “But Davius isn’t afraid of her. And he’s declared Riften off limits. Falkreath too, for some reason.”

Mjoll raised her goblet, but set it down without taking a sip. “He’s told Maven to… _wow_. How’s she taking that?”

Keerava chuckled louder. “Well, Maven doesn’t come in here anymore, not that we were close before, mind you. But I’ve heard she’s got her sights set on Whiterun. I take that to mean she’s just as scared of Davius as everyone else is of her.”

“So Davius is… _good_?”

“I just said Maven Black-Briar is scared of him. Terrified, if you can trust the rumor mill. What sort of man does that sound like to you?” The chime over the Bee and Barb’s front door jangled, and Keerava motioned a tall man in green mage’s robes toward an empty table before continuing, her voice a near whisper. “Week after he came to town, he shook us down, Davius did. Demanded money to take back to Mercer Frey. Threatened my family.”

“He did _not,_ ” Mjoll gasped out, her mouth hanging open at Keerava’s somber eyes. “He really did? No, but…he and Talen-Jei are friends, aren’t they?”

Mjoll shook her head and felt her heart fall to her feet. The puzzle pieces were fitting into place now, just not forming the picture she’d…well. She’d hoped he’d turn out to be different, that’s all. She could admit that to herself now, now that she had the answers she needed. “How could you let him back in here after that?”

“Things aren’t simple, Mjoll. You know that. And Davius…he asked Talen-Jei how to get the money from me, quickly. No conflict. Mercer wasn’t going to leave us alone; he’d eventually send some thug, someone more interested in cutting and killing than getting paid. Davius knew. So did Talen-Jei. My family means more to me than anything, so Talen-Jei told Davius to use it.”

Mjoll took a long drink. “How long did it take you to let Talen-Jei back in?”

Keerava laughed then, long and loud. “He stayed away almost a week. And no, Davius knew not to come here, not after that. Then, a few weeks later, a huge crate shows up. Urns full of marshmerrow – my family grows it on their farm – along with a packet of letters and a sweet painting of my nieces. No tariff stamps. Right under Maven’s nose. Not too many could have done that.”

She grabbed a clean rag and wiped down the bar, polishing its wooden surface to a shine. “And not long after, Davius came in the back door and walked right up to Talen-Jei. I got up to go throw him out, but he handed Talen-Jei a box. A small box, like one you’d keep jewelry in. Talen-Jei hugged Davius. Hugged him, right in the middle of the floor. And a week later he gives me this,” Keerava said, waggling her fingers and watching her amethysts sparkle in the candlelight. She eyed Mjoll across the bar.

Mjoll sat up straight. “Wait, you knew? That Talen-Jei didn’t-”

“I love Talen-Jei, but he’s no adventurer. And if he waited until we could afford these things, we’d never get married. So yes, I know. But I’ll never tell him.”

Mjoll grinned at the image of Talen-Jei and Davius hugging it out in the middle of a busy tavern, and then her shoulders slumped. He’d spoken with genuine passion about helping his fellow veterans. And Mara knew he’d helped almost everyone in Riften without expecting anything in return.

But there was no escaping it – he was a thief, and lived with thieves. Associated with thieves. Mjoll drained her wine and tried again to reconcile the two men, for that’s how she’d started thinking of him. “I don’t know what to think. He’s just so…”

Blue eyes and a sunlit smile wavered behind her eyes, and Mjoll felt the warmth of a blush creeping up to her hairline and down her chest. “But how can I-“

Keerava cleared her throat and peered across the bar, her brow raised in an expression Mjoll interpreted as a reprimand. Or maybe a warning. “If you try to put labels on a man like that, you’ll be nothing but disappointed. Good, bad…those ideas – _those values_ – they just don’t mean the same things to him as they do to you.”

Mjoll narrowed her eyes, and huffed a frustrated sigh. She wanted to argue: stealing or murder’s always wrong – _it is_. Davius could have chosen not to give in to Mercer’s demands. He has the power to leave his life of crime behind – _he absolutely does._

She believed it, after all. All of it.

She’d lived it.

But she didn’t say it, any of it, and she wasn’t sure why. Instead, she ordered a plate of bread and cheese and another bottle of wine. “Do you…do you know where he’s gone?”

Keerava smiled and shook her head. “No. But he’ll be back. You can ask him, then.”

 

* * *

 

Davius stifled a smile at the impeccable manners of the guards. Those who’d once considered him nothing but a mark skipped to attention and all but bowed and scraped upon his approach to the gate. Such a satisfying change in a few short months. He’d come back to Riften a relative unknown, except for his name and the shadows of his parents’ reputation, and now?

Well now, he owned the whole fucking thing.

Brynjolf, who’d been his own age when he’d left for the war, had proven a surprise – loyal and helpful and completely uninterested in running the Guild. When Davius killed the traitor Mercer Frey, Brynjolf tossed the title of Guildmaster his way and Davius took it with pride. And used it to wrangle the guild into the type of organization it had been during his parents’ days – and it would be better, even, once Delvin and Vex and Thrynn returned with the fabled Crown of Barenziah.

With the Skeleton Key returned to Nocturnal and a paragon displayed in the Cistern, the Guild’s string of bad luck, years of horrible luck under Mercer’s malfeasance, was as good as over. Bigger scores, fatter coffers were on their way. Davius felt like whistling, and he might have let out a few warbles on his way to the Bee and Barb, he wasn’t sure. As soon as he saw the woman standing at the tavern’s door, all thoughts but one fled his mind like draugr ‘round a bonfire.

_Fucking magnificent._

Davius hadn’t meant to fall for Mjoll, or anyone for that matter. Seven years into the war, he’d written his girl. ‘Move on,’ he’d told her, and she had. It was better that way – after the things he’d seen and done, he couldn’t imagine a time when he’d be good for anyone, ever again.

But the ridiculous lessons his mother used to spout had proved true: time really did heal. Not all wounds, never that. But when he looked at Mjoll, he felt his heart beating again. He felt...something again, after years of nothing but icy numbness and helpless rage.

It felt good, for a change. Easy and sweet, like a clear, ambling river in the midst of a deep, shady forest, its waters dappled with sunshine and fragrant with wood smoke and warm, soft grass.  

That last bit, he mused, probably had more to do with the campsites where he’d slept during his latest journey. He’d spent long nights amid warm, soft grasses, imagining Mjoll charging into battle, sunlight gleaming off her sword and coloring her aqua eyes iridescent with righteous fury. Or meeting him at the gate, that fury softened by anticipation and passion, her color high. She’d rush into his open arms, and he’d –

But his wildest fantasy paled to nothing in her presence. On his way over the bridge, he tried to remember what he’d planned to say, but no words came to mind. And maybe he didn’t need them. Davius simply smiled, and his heart leapt a little as she smiled back, her gaze roaming over the pack on his back and coming to rest on the weapon at his hip.

Her smile faded. He knew what caught her attention – a frosty shimmer of enchantment on a barely-visible green blade. A badly-chipped hilt that couldn’t be comfortable in a fight – he should have taken the greatsword to Balimund before seeing Mjoll, but he hadn’t expected to meet her so soon.

And if he was honest with himself, if he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t change a thing. Davius couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt some strange connection between them that hadn’t been there before he left, and though he didn’t know why it was there, he wasn’t about to let another hour pass between them without acting on it.

“You…”

Mjoll spoke in a choked whisper, and stepped toward him, her wide, misty eyes shifting between his own, and the sword. “That’s, that’s Grimsever. But...”

She reached her fingers out toward the hilt, but jerked them back just before they touched the glass, holding them as if she’d been stung. “How?”

Davius pulled Grimsever from his belt and looked it over once more before presenting the blade to its owner. “Well, Mzinchaleft wasn’t easy to find, and it certainly wasn’t easy to navigate, but-“

“No,” she said, holding out her hands to receive the hilt, lovingly tracing its chipped edges, “how did you know? How did you know I’d lost her?”

Of course Mjoll would refer to her sword as a person, Davius thought. He smirked into the morning sun. “What, you can ask questions about me, but I can’t about you?”

He held up a hand to forestall her flustered explanation. One of his lieutenants had met him early that morning at the Rift border, both to accompany him on the last leg of the journey and to fill him in on any business he’d missed in the month he’d been gone. Davius had been most interested to hear Keerava’s account of Mjoll’s queries regarding the new guildmaster. “I don’t mind. I liked it,” he said, and smiled at the pink color rising to her cheeks. Lovely, just as he’d known it would be.

“I have something else for you.”

Mjoll watched him dip his fingers into a small pocket at his chest, her curiosity piqued. Davius couldn’t help but chuckle a bit as he pulled out the delicate circle of gold and dropped it into her outstretched hand. Her mouth fell open, and she leaned Grimsever against the Bee and Barb’s wall.

“Now, that one took a little more doing. A friend of mine vaguely remembered…very vaguely,” he said, squinting toward the sky and hoping Mjoll’s joy over having the ring returned would outweigh her anger at having it stolen, “possibly selling the ring to a Khajiit caravan. Maybe.”

Mjoll wasn’t listening. She turned the ring over in her fingers and held it up to the sun. Davius watched her read the engraving. _Sand elske._ True love.

When Davius had read those words, he admitted to a flare of jealousy, imagining someone, perhaps even that simpering Aerin, slipping the ring on her finger along with a kiss or two. Well, if that was true, it didn’t change Davius’s debt: he’d pledged to recover everything stolen from Riften during Mercer’s rule, and Mjoll’s ring sat at the top of that list.

Mjoll clenched the ring in her fist and held it to her heart. She took a deep breath. “Thank you,” she said, her voice husky and low. “Thank you for Grimsever, which, I mean…I’m not sure I want to know what you fought – what you suffered – to bring her back to me. I feel like I have part of myself back, too. And thank you for this.”

She pulled a necklace from under her bodice and untied the leather thong, looping one end of it through the ring and tying it again, tucking the ring out of sight. “It was my mother’s, and I’ve never forgiven myself for losing it. Even if it was stolen, I failed to take care of it, so the fault was mine. Thank you. I can never thank you enough.”

“Come out with me, then,” he said, the words tumbling from his mouth before he’d thought them through.

Davius held his breath and searched Mjoll’s face, waiting for her frown. He knew it was coming. He’d given back her two most prized possessions, and took that moment to ask for her company?

“I didn’t mean….I wouldn’t expect –“

“I know,” she whispered, her fingers worrying the ring through the linen of her dress. “And I wouldn’t say yes to…anything…out of obligation, have no fear of that.”

Davius nodded and heaved his pack back onto his shoulder and turned to leave.

_Idiot. Fucking moron._

“I’ll see you around town, then. Maybe-“

“Yes.”

“Yes?” Davius nearly ran into a post in his haste to turn around. “When?”

Mjoll grinned and hefted Grimsever, resting the blade flat against her shoulder. “You invited me, errand boy. That means you make the plan.”

“Ah. You expect to be impressed, do you?” Davius could do that. He’d only been dreaming of the chance for months, after all.

“Yes,” Mjoll said, her smile widening. “Astonish me


	3. The Sky of Daytime Dies Away

  
“…and then I woke up, and there was Aerin. I was lying in a clearing outside Mzinchaleft, and he’d healed the worst of my injuries. I owe him my life,” Mjoll said matter-of-factly, twisting a few grapes from their vine and popping them into her mouth. Davius frowned. She felt beholden to that self-righteous prig? Unacceptable.

“And I’m glad you’re still with us, and decided to make Riften your home. So I owe Aerin a debt as well,” he said. His eyes met hers, and he waited for the blush to rise to her cheeks before taking a drink.

_You don’t want to think about Aerin anymore, do you? No. Think of us, out here on the lakeshore. Nirnroot singing in the purple dusk, leaves falling around us like shining golden coins.  
_

Magic.

He couldn’t have chosen better if he’d had a year to plan. And he didn’t; he hadn’t wanted to wait another day. With that in mind, he took what he knew of Mjoll – she loved Riften, and wanted to see it at its best. Well, this was it.

The basket he’d packed carried the essentials: fresh, warm bread, crisp apples, delicious salty bacon, grapes, and the best wine he could find – taken from Maven Black-Briar’s personal stores. Davius let her think she was doing him a favor, and why not? He was feeling magnanimous. Besides, he knew that Maven knew he could have it any time he wanted, anyway.

Yes, his plan to ‘astonish’ Mjoll had come together nicely – dinner, good conversation, and what was promising to be a perfect sunset – except for one unfortunate detour into the wonder that was Aerin. But Davius feared little on that score. She shared a house with the man. If they’d not become more than friends in all that time, they weren’t liable to. The field was open, as far as he was concerned. And if Aerin proved too much of a distraction, well.

There were ways of dealing with such a thing.

“So I get why you’re here in Riften,” Davius said, and tore a crust from his bread, tossing it into the lake. Bubbles surrounded it, followed by the snout of a hungry river betty. “You told me how you got here. But where are you from? Where’d you grow up? What was your life like, you know, before you took up adventuring into sword-eating Dwemer ruins?”

“I grew up on a farm in Hjaalmarch, near Solitude.” Mjoll grinned and held out her hand for a crust of bread and tore it to bits, watching more fish come to the surface for their own dinner. “Lucky, peaceful childhood – running in green meadows, flowers in my hair, churning butter with my mom. I remember, my brother and I had these wooden swords – our dad made them – and we’d play bandits, and…”

Her smile faltered, and her voice trailed off into a heavy sigh. “That ring you brought back…my mother gave it to me on a trip to Solitude. We used to go by ourselves and sit on the beach, on the rocks. Watching waves come in, ships…”

“Are your parents…”

“Dead. Natural causes. If sadness is a natural cause, I guess.” Her eyes gleamed like dewdrops on spring grass, and her voice sounded choked. “I shouldn’t…”

“If you want to talk about it, then, it’s something I want to hear,” Davius said, and was almost surprised to realize he meant it. Talk about dead parents might not be romantic, but Mjoll feeling like she could open up to him boded nothing but good. “It’s your life, Mjoll. Part of you.”

“You might be sorry you took me on, you know.” Mjoll sniffed and wiped at her eyes, the corners of her mouth lifting in a halfhearted attempt at a smile. “I was thirteen, and my brother almost twelve. Dad had gone to the Solitude markets. Bandits. They took everything. Threatened Mom. ‘If you have anything hidden and don’t tell…’ you know the routine. My brother, he was so angry. He grabbed his wooden sword and –“

Davius didn’t need to hear what came next. Molten anger burned through his veins. “You don’t have to keep going. Fuck. I’m sorry.”

They sat in silence for long minutes, watching the sun sink below the lake. Mjoll wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered. “I know. I…it was so long ago, but sometimes I can hear it. When it’s quiet. That sound a blade makes when it-“

_He crouched in the dark alcove. Damn Stormcloaks…how long did it take to walk down a godsdamned hallway? And then – boots scratching on stone. The whoosh and flicker of a torch. The dagger clenched in his palm._

_And the rip of ebony on flesh._

Davius jumped at Mjoll’s broken, choking sob. “Well,” she said, swiping at her eyes again, “there’s nothing I can do for them now. But what I can do for others – Riften – I mean, there’s just so much that needs done, and-“

“There is,” Davius said. He swiveled toward her and nodded, feeling the conversation getting back on track. “And I want you to know I’m changing things. In the guild, in the city. I know how you feel about it, but it’s different now than it was under Mercer – the old guildmaster, I mean. He was just…”

Davius let out a long whistle and lobbed another crust of bread far out into the middle of the lake. “Anyway, my guild isn’t full of bandits or marauders. Those who can’t abide by the rules will leave. I want to make Riften a safe place. For us. Where people who haven’t had the best life can find a family. Maybe, a place where veterans like me can-”

“It’s not a secret I’m no fan of the Thieves Guild. You’re breaking the law, of course,” Mjoll said, frowning and biting her bottom lip, “but…”

“But?”

“I admit Riften is better since you came back.” Mjoll shook her head, and her frown turned into a too-bright smile. “Let’s not talk about that today. Not anymore. I want to hear about you, before the war took you away. What were you like? Little Davius in miniature guild leathers?”

“Hardly,” he said, and picked up an apple, tossing it from hand to hand. “I apprenticed at the stables, if you can believe it.”

“I can’t.”

“Ask Hofgrir.” Davius swore under his breath, bobbling the apple and letting it fall to the ground. Of all the stupid things to bring up. He could damned well see Mjoll going to the stablemaster for stories of him as a boy. And if she did, that would mean she was interested, and all to the good. But what she’d find…

“No, actually, don’t. He won’t have good things to say.”

“Why?” Mjoll snapped up Davius’s apple and took a bite. “Were you a terrible stablehand?”

“No. Horses…I could always relate to horses. In a way maybe I couldn’t with people. But I, ah…his daughter and I-”

Mjoll blushed and gasped, pausing with the apple halfway to her mouth. “He caught you with his daughter? I can imagine most fathers –“

“What? No, not that,” Davius said, feeling heat sear his temples, “that…well, that would have been dealt with handily, by my parents, if not hers. No, we were…close. We made promises. And I left her. The war was the reason why, but it was me who did the leaving.”

Davius glanced at Mjoll’s face and saw sympathy there, in her furrowed brow and pursed lips. His eyes burned and he looked out across the lake, dark now under a moonless sky. She’d wanted more lighthearted conversation, and this certainly wasn’t it. But once he’d begun to tell the tale, he couldn’t stop.

“And – and worse, I told her I’d come back. I swore it, Mjoll. But, I just couldn’t. I did things. Things I couldn’t...I wrote her and told her to move on with her life. She’d waited for me. For years, and I just told her to… _move on_. So she did. Married a rancher in Whiterun Hold.”

A wolf howled in the distance, and Davius suppressed a shudder at chills creeping up his spine. “I’ve killed, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not. I’ve lied and cheated. Stolen things – valuable things, beautiful things. Wicked things. But what I regret…what I really regret? Taking those years of her life for myself, and wasting them. It was the most cruel, selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

He glanced over at Mjoll. Her face looked like marble in the glow of a nearby patch of nirnroot – cool and pale and utterly inscrutable. When he’d first started babbling about his past and mentioned Hofgrir, he wasn’t sure why, and just added it up to nerves. Courting jitters, saying the wrong thing. It happened. Not to him, of course, but Mjoll was special-

A blast of heat shot through his heart, and he knew – Mjoll. It was just…Mjoll. He couldn’t hide from her, not something like this. If she knew his deepest, darkest secret and still chose to stay, maybe...

Davius watched Mjoll throw her apple core into the lake and wipe her sticky hands on her leggings before swiping at her eyes. “Everyone has regrets, Davius.”

Well, she didn’t tell him to leave, or to jump in the lake. That was something. “Even Maven Black-Briar?”

He’d meant it as a joke, a tension breaker, after their too-serious conversation, but Mjoll rested her chin on her knees and sighed. “No, not her,” she said, and looked up at him, a sad little half-smile on her lips. “Not her.”

* * *

“So, ah…you sure you want to be involved in this?” Davius looked over his shoulder at Mjoll, crouched behind him on the docks. She’d come to him two weeks ago with rumors of a skooma operation headed up by a Dunmer named Sarthis Idren, in the warehouses just outside the city. At first, Davius had thought her source’s tale typical of Riften’s career beggars – exaggerated to draw the sympathies of people like Mjoll – but the more he listened, the more Wujeeta’s story rang true: sounded like this Sarthis Idren was running a tidy little scam.

Mjoll brushed a dragonfly from her ear and nodded. “Wujeeta came to me, remember? If this scum is targeting the poor to get them hooked on skooma, I want a piece of him. And I can swing a sword as well as you. Better, maybe.”

Davius grinned into the darkness. The past month had been fun. More than fun. Their lakeside picnic hadn’t been spoiled by gloomy conversation or Davius’s confession, and the morning’s wee hours had found them still there, wrapped up in a blanket and sharing story after story. He’d not wanted it to end.

And it hadn’t, not really. He and Mjoll spent much of their spare time together, back on the shore, or at what had quickly become their corner table at the Bee and Barb. On those rare afternoons where Mjoll successfully eluded Aerin, Davius joined her outside the gates – hunting or fishing or clearing the woods of vermin. Once, he’d even brought Mjoll down to the Cistern and introduced her to Brynjolf and Delvin and Vex.

That meeting was exactly as awkward as Davius feared, and if Dirge hadn’t embarrassed himself by challenging Mjoll to a fight (which he lost, and lost badly), there might never have been another. But kicking Dirge’s ass seemed to work as an icebreaker for everyone involved, and they’d stayed long into the night drinking mead and playing cards. Mjoll even tried her hand at the guild’s training chests.

She was terrible at picking locks. But, as Davius told her, grinning over her twentieth broken pick and frustrated scowl, perfect people are boring.

And boring, Mjoll was not.

Even the Aerin situation had resolved itself. Mostly, anyway, and Davius hadn’t had to lift a finger. Aerin had done himself in – he’d cornered Mjoll the week before, demanding she stop ‘fraternizing with the enemy,’ and since then, relations between the two friends had been decidedly chilly. Aerin should have known better than to order someone like Mjoll around. As for Davius, he was happy to lend whatever warmth he could to pick up the slack.

And now, they worked together to rid Riften of a dangerous element. Just how dangerous, Davius wasn’t sure, but he’d spoken to Maven Black-Briar about the rumored skooma den and got the distinct impression she was well aware of its existence.

Dangerous, indeed. If the Black-Briars were involved, he’d have to step carefully. He’d taken almost everything from Maven, everything but her court, and even that she held at his sufferance. She knew it as well as he did, and a defeat like that could leave her desperate to save what was left of her influence in Riften. If Sarthis Idren really was on her payroll.  

But Mjoll was right – Sarthis used skooma to target Riften’s weakest and most vulnerable, getting them hooked on the expensive drug. And when they weren’t able to pay – and he knew they wouldn’t be able to pay, it’s why he chose people like Wujeeta in the first place – he’d take everything they had. Or conscript them into servitude, use them to do his dirty work and get them all killed, most likely.

That didn’t line up with Davius’s vision for Riften. Sure, he ran the Thieves Guild, but he knew what he was, and went into work every day with a clear head and the will to choose. Someone hooked on skooma, though? Someone with no money or power? No family? Sarthis made sure his marks lacked agency, lacked the freedom to choose anything other than a cage – either one of Sarthis’s making or one of iron, below Mistveil Keep. Or, if all else failed, a wooden one, six feet underground.

Davius didn’t draw many lines in the sand, but that was a big one. Maybe _the_ biggest.

The warehouse door opened, and several armed men walked out – two, Davius noted without surprise, wearing purple livery – and Davius crouched lower. Shift change, just like he’d seen every night of the last two weeks’ surveillance. Mjoll tapped Davius’s shoulder. He nodded, and as they’d planned, crept along the side of the building toward the back entrance. Mjoll would wait a minute or two before heading in the front. Davius thought of what awaited him inside and grinned, once more, into the darkness.

The game was on.

 

* * *

 

 

Mjoll crept around yet another corner of the warehouse in annoyed wonder. She’d searched nearly every room and hadn’t seen one single thug, and no sign of Sarthis. Or Davius.

The back entrance lay just around the next corner. Worry gnawed at her gut. It was too quiet; she’d heard nothing but her own padding feet the whole time she’d been inside. Mjoll started to wonder if they’d gotten bad information, when she heard a voice – still and calm and almost…playful.

_Davius_. There he was.

“…give you the whole song and dance, you know the one. ‘Don’t let me see you ‘round these parts no more, my man.’ That’d be alright, yeah? I mean, your crew’s dead, your operation in shambles. I could just...leave you alive so you could turn tail and run. Live to fight another day, in some other hold, even.”

Mjoll started in disgust and held back a gasp. Surely Davius didn’t think to let anyone go free? She peeked around the door frame and darted back – Davius held Sarthis with a dagger at his neck, and a dozen thugs and Rift guards lay at his feet. He told her he’d scouted out the warehouse, that Sarthis’s crew would be evenly distributed throughout. How was that possible if they were all…here?

“But if you belong to Maven,” Davius said, his voice silky and low, “you’ve got Maven’s money. You’ll set up nice and pretty somewhere safe, give her time to lick her wounds. And I can’t let that happen. Can’t leave a crown on the table.”

Mjoll breathed a sigh of relief. They’d planned to turn any surviving thugs into Mistveil Keep, but the way Davius had spoken…

She’d only doubted him for a second, after all. Maybe two. Mjoll waggled her fingers around the hilt of her sword and took a step toward the doorway. A floorboard creaked, and she stilled. Had her step made the noise? She wasn’t sure, but she noticed Davius tense and glance her way. After what seemed like an hour, he shrugged and turned a grin back on Sarthis.

“You’re not going to kill me, fetcher. Why would you? I’m worth more to you alive, Maven will make sure of it.” Mjoll heard the smirk slide across Sarthis’s face and wondered at his bravery. Or stupidity, given the bodies of his colleagues strewn across the floor and Davius’s remarkably unmussed appearance. “Besides, if you _were_ going to kill me, you’d have done it already. Why all the drama?”

Mjoll thought she heard a noise toward the front of the warehouse. A shuffle. And what about that creak…

More guards, maybe? She’d just turned back toward the docks when she heard something else – a soft ripping sound, followed by a spluttering gag and a crash of metal on wood. She whirled back around and stood in the doorway, breathless and frozen to the spot.

Davius held Sarthis against the wall, his hands sticky with blood streaming from a gaping slice across the Dunmer’s throat. He dragged the tip of a gleaming ebony dagger down Sarthis’s chest.

“Because honestly,” Davius said, staring into Sarthis’s bulging eyes and giving him one more shove against the wall, “it’s the most fun I’ve had in ages.” Davius jammed his dagger up under Sarthis’s ribs, and twisted, before yanking it out and letting Sarthis fall.

The elf was dead before he hit the ground.

Mjoll did gasp, then, and red blooms of shock and anger colored her vision. She ran into the room and struggled to draw breath, her eyes shifting from Sarthis’s ruined body to Davius’s ghostly-pale face.

The ebony dagger slipped from Davius’s hand and fell with a dull clatter to the floor.   



	4. All the Earthly Things, They Stop to Play

Mjoll stared, taking in Davius’s wide eyes and the blood dripping from his strange, black armor. She’d not noticed it before – a smoky, almost shimmering second skin over his lean form that made her want to look away. At what, she wasn’t sure, but she forced her eyes to stay put. Her gaze came to rest on his lips, slightly open and pursed, like he wanted to speak, but wasn’t sure what to say. What _could_ he say, really?

She closed her eyes. All she could see was his smile – she couldn’t chase it from her mind. That smile that lit his face as he’d stabbed Sarthis. Gutted him, more like.

“That was…how could you do that? He wasn’t attacking you, he wasn’t even fighting. What happened to turning him into the jarl?”

Davius didn’t move. Mjoll had never seen anyone stand so perfectly still. She wasn’t sure he was even breathing. Finally, he cleared his throat. “You heard me. You must have. He’s on Maven’s payroll.”

Mjoll waited for something else, some other reason why, but Davius apparently thought that explained it all. She shrugged. “We knew he was a thug, we knew he was awful, yes. But that-“

“She’d make a big show of throwing him in prison, sure,” Davius said, reaching up to wipe a stream of blood dripping from his temple down to his cheek, “but he’d be out in no time. Just like I said, out and setting up a new den somewhere else.”

“But – but we don’t get to make those decisions, we-“

“Yes, we do. Who should, if not us?”

Mjoll shook her head, slowly, back and forth. How had this happened? Had she missed something? She remembered him talking that night on the lakeshore, the night that started it all, talking about his past and the things he’d done.

_I’ve killed, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not…_

She told herself he’d been talking about the war. But, had he? Maybe she hadn’t missed it, after all. Maybe she just didn’t want to see. Her head was spinning. “It’s just…it’s not how it works, Davius. We don’t-“

“Yes, we do,” Davius repeated, pacing over to a window near the door and back again, his voice shaking, “yes, we _fucking_ do. You _know_. You _know_ , Mjoll, as well as I do what Maven would do. Would have done, if we’d given her Sarthis. And correct me if I’m wrong, but the jarl? That’s still Maven, right?” Davius’s eyes flashed with cold, icy fury. “So we let Maven deal with him, and Maven…she’s as bad as the worst of them. The worst thief, the worst marauder, even, because she has-“

It didn’t matter, Mjoll wanted to say, and stepped forward ready to argue. But Davius shook his head and closed the distance between them, surprising her into silence. He stood close, close enough she could feel the force of his words against her hair.

“She has _power_. These lords and ladies and jarls and emperors…they don’t play by the rules. They don’t – never have and never will. They’re the ones, Mjoll.” He backed up a step and pointed in the direction of the keep. “They’re the bandits that killed your brother. Who killed him, and laughed because they know…they _know_.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”

He gripped her shoulders, and Mjoll flinched. He wasn’t hurting her; far from it. His hands were soft, or soft as they could be inside gauntlets made of…whatever that black armor was.

“But we _can_. We can do something about it now, and if we can, we _do_. We can keep them from stepping on us. Keep them from getting their claws into us, because if we let them, if we let them do that, Mjoll, they’ll never let go.”

“But, please.” His voice sounded choked, and Mjoll gazed into tears turning his eyes to melting ice. “Please, tell me. Tell me how letting him live is best, letting him go to Maven is moral and…and _lawful_. I agree, I do. But when he hooks the next mom or dad, what then? When their kids go hungry or…worse, what then? You know how people like Sarthis treat kids, don’t you? You can’t possibly be so…so _naïve_ to think hurting kids is a line some bottom-feeder like him wouldn’t cross. You can’t. So, we let him live and more people get killed…will you tell me I did my best? At least we followed the fucking _law_? Is that what you’d tell me then?”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders. Mjoll stepped back like she’d been stung, though he’d not even raised his voice.

_“…hurting kids is a line some bottom-feeder wouldn’t cross…”_

Davius’s words seemed to echo through the blood-soaked room, accusing and taunting.

“ _Everyone has regrets…”_

Everyone. But she’d made her choice, and made her amends. That wasn’t her life anymore. She shoved her own words away, stiffened her spine, and tried again.

“There’s more to it than that. And, given what you do, I thought…I thought you’d understand. You work with thieves, Davius. Former bandits, even – I talked to Thrynn, I know his story. What if Sarthis – what if he’d been able to change?” Davius’s eyes widened in disbelief, but she kept going. It seemed a stretch, even to her, but she had to believe it was possible. “It _is_ possible. He could have been the victim of exactly the kind of thing you were talking about. And could have changed, or turned his life around, and helped others do the same-“

She broke off and searched his face. So much blood. It clung to his brows and the scars on his cheeks. She caught a flash of red in the corner of her eye and looked down. His hands had left red smears on her own armor. She shuddered and swallowed, hard. “And it’s more than that. I was there, Davius. I saw your face. You enjoyed it, I know you did. And that feeling, I don’t want it to-”

“You know what?” Davius shrugged and his eyes darkened, shuttering behind some shield Mjoll hadn’t seen before. She stepped back in shock at the emptiness she saw in their blue-gray depths. He hardly looked like the same man, not like Davius at all. “I did. I did enjoy it, getting rid of that…that _trash_ ,” he said, kicking Sarthis’s body. His boot made a metallic clang, and a thud sounded as whatever he’d kicked skidded over and banged into the wall. “Do you know what the city you love would look like if we left it up to him? Up to Maven? Nothing but zombies. Imagine Riften full of draugr, and you’d have it. So, yeah, he needed to die, and _yeah_...I _love_ that I got to make it happen. I make no apologies for it, and I make no apologies to you.”

Mjoll stepped back again and nearly fell over one of Sarthis’s dead guards. Davius stepped forward, and Mjoll thought for a moment he was moving to help her, but he stopped and watched her instead, his eyes lingering on her own.

“You know who I am. Maybe you hoped one day I’d change, but deep down, you know. I’ve been nothing but honest. And you know what? You’re not even mad at me. You’re mad at yourself. Because you have _Aerin_ ,” he said, and a smirk slid across his face. Mjoll felt her own face crumple and fought to keep her tears at bay. “Your gallant warrior at your side. Shining and pure. _Good_. But you don’t want him, do you? You don’t. You want me. And maybe, just maybe, you don’t like what that says about-“

A loud creak sounded behind them, and Davius broke off and moved his hand to his empty weapons belt.

Mjoll swore under her breath and whirled around, her hands gripping Grimsever, in time to see a huge Dunmer the size of an Orc walk through the door, along with a Rift guard. He spared a quick glance for Sarthis’s body, and laughed.

“Oh, gods. Maven’s going to love this. Of course she’d rather I’d saved Sarthis – he _has_ been rather useful – but getting rid of you two will more than make up for it.” He lunged toward them, grinning as he raised his shining axe in a sweeping motion across his torso.

Mjoll didn’t think – she didn’t have time. She crouched low, thrusting out and up with Grimsever. Its enchanted blade hissed and sizzled its way under the Dunmer’s ribcage. The round openings in his leather armor made a perfect frame for the dark, bloody mess she made of his gut. Why smiths even made armor with no…well, _armor_ , right over one of the squishiest parts of the body, she’d never know. But just now, she was glad they did.

She stood, bracing her foot against his hip and kicked him back, freeing her sword. He toppled back into the doorway, and the Rift guard fell under the Dunmer’s bulk. He grabbed Mjoll’s boot. Again, without thinking, she kicked out and shoved her sword through the guard’s chest, her stomach turning as a red stain bloomed around the twin swords on his badge.

Mjoll looked for Davius and frowned. He crouched by the far wall, a look of terror on his face and his dagger in his hand; she’d forgotten he’d dropped it. The metallic clang and dull thud she heard when he’d kicked Sarthis made sense now – he’d kicked his own dagger.

_Gods_.

She forced her eyes back to the dead men on the floor.

_I killed a guard. A Rift guard._

Her hands started to shake, and she willed them still, her eyes bright behind the tears that had been threatening to fall for the last – what had it been, ten minutes? Twenty? It seemed a lifetime. She took a gasping breath, and nearly choked: a commotion sounded outside, and heavy footsteps pounded on the docks. Mjoll forced another breath in and out of her lungs, and held a hand out for Davius. “Come with me.”

 

* * *

As much as he’d been tempted, Davius had never broken into the house Mjoll shared with Aerin. He’d been dying to see what Mjoll’s personal space looked like and, even though he knew better, he wanted to check out the sleeping arrangements. But he’d controlled himself, and now that he was in the middle of Mjoll’s kitchen brewing a pot of tea and watching her make toast over the fire, he was glad of it.

And, he had an idea she’d know, anyway. Somehow.

For now, Davius was surprised she was still speaking to him, even if her words were clipped, and spoken below flushed cheeks and daggers for eyes. He’d nearly gotten them both killed, kicking his dagger across the warehouse like a moron with no self-control. He’d regret that the rest of his life. That, and what he’d said. Not the bit about killing Sarthis, he’d meant every word.

It was the garbage about Aerin that hit below the belt, and he’d known it the moment the words had slithered from his mouth. But between the ambush by Sarthis’s ineffective bodyguard and running from patrols who’d doubtless been sent to the warehouse by Maven, there’d been no time for apologies.

It was time, now.

“Mjoll,” he said, putting the lid on the teapot and turning to face the music, “about-“

“Yes, _about_.” Mjoll took the rack of browned bread from the fire and set it on the countertop. She pushed a section of damp hair from her face and stared at him with narrowed eyes, the same expression she’d worn since they’d reached Mjoll’s house, wet and shaking from their narrow escape in the canals. “We need to talk about what happened.”

Davius groaned. There was no way they’d see eye to eye about what he’d done. Davius wasn’t looking forward to more fighting. He found two mugs in a cabinet and filled them with tea. “Sugar?”

Mjoll shook her head.

“Come on. Do you really think I should have let that asshole run free?” He set the mug on the counter next to Mjoll and took a sip from his own. His eyes watered. “Fuck, that’s hot. ‘Cause you know that’s what –“

“No,” Mjoll said, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest. “That wasn’t what…”

She sighed and shook her head. “Fine. It’s not going to just go away, so we might as well. I know you think what I said about Sarthis was stupid. Don’t argue,” she said, fending off his objection with another shake of her head. “I want to make you understand, but you _won’t_ understand unless...”

Mjoll cleared her throat. “I have to tell you something.”

Davius tapped the side of Mjoll’s mug. Still too hot. “Ok, what is it?”

“All the stories about my travels, what I did before coming to Riften, they weren’t precisely true. And getting hurt in Mzinchaleft wasn’t why I gave it all up. That’s just a story I told Aerin. I mean, the bit about helping people, _that_ was true. And since Aerin lived in Riften, it was as good a place as any to start. But I’d already decided to settle down before I got hurt.”

“So, something you can’t tell Aerin, but you’re going to tell me? _Go on_.”

Mjoll rolled her eyes and took a sip from her mug. She winced. “Gods, Davius, how long did you boil this water?” She blew over her mug and watched ripples form across the dark amber tea. “I wasn’t an adventurer – gods, I hate that word. More like a…”

Davius tested his tea with his finger before taking another sip. Finally cool enough to drink.

“What would you have done, if someone came to your home and killed your family?”

“I think you know what I would have done,” Davius answered, biting into a piece of toast. He offered one to Mjoll.

“Something we have in common, then,” she said, and broke the crust off her toast, setting the rest aside. “I searched for _them_. The ones who killed my brother. Scoured the province. But how would I know which ones were _the_ ones? I had no idea, and the thought of them going free…I had these dreams, daydreams of killing them. Keeping them alive long enough to hurt. To really hurt. But it was never enough…there was always another camp. Another hideout. Every bandit, marauder, murderer…everyone I got wind of, in every hold. I tracked them and killed them, to a man. No mercy.” Her brows rose at Davius’s look of surprise. “You saw me take down that Orc tonight, and the…that guard.”

“Dunmer.”

“What? Oh, right. Divines, he was big,” she said, biting the corner off her crust of bread and chewing thoughtfully. “Anyway, you saw that, and I’m not anywhere near as conditioned as I was in those days.”

“That wasn’t why I was surprised,” Davius said, boosting himself onto Mjoll’s countertop. “You didn’t want to kill those guys, and you only did because they attacked us. It shook you to the skin, I know it did. Not really what I’d expect in a… _hunter_.”

“But back when I… _hunted_ , I probably looked a lot like you did when you killed Sarthis. It was…”

Mjoll nodded and took a sip of tea. A long drink, now it wasn’t hot enough to sear her throat. “It was a life, for more years than I’d like to admit. A good life. I felt like I was doing something right. I had a friend with me too – a mage. A master with runes. Between my arrows and sword and his fire and lightning, no one stood a chance.”

“Sounds good so far,” Davius said, snagging another piece of toast.

“That’s what I thought. But there was a camp, not far from Mzinchaleft. Buncha bandits, buncha tents.” Mjoll leaned into Davius’s side and shivers tickled his spine at the unexpected touch. But she pushed herself away from the counter and opened a cabinet, taking down a bright green bottle.

“Firebrand Wine?”

She nodded and popped out the cork, taking a long drink and passing the bottle to Davius. “I’m fine with tea, for now.”

Mjoll took another sip and sank down into a chair near the kitchen table. “Everyone was asleep, even their guard. Idiots. I should have known. My mage threw runes all through the camp. I shot an arrow at one of the tents, and boom boom boom, the screams and running and the lightning. Just like always,” she said, lifting the bottle to her lips. She set it on the table after draining at least a third of the bottle, and stared at the floor.

“I remember hearing laughter, my own, of course. All that death, all that carnage, it...that _thrill_ , I never got tired of that thrill. Anyway, I took some down with arrows, and the very last got my sword. I jumped down from the rock I’d perched on and ran him through. He begged, begged for his life. But I laughed. I _laughed_. And that…that was when I heard it.”

Davius slid from the countertop and pulled the other chair out. He sat down, facing Mjoll.

“A cry. Not a bandit’s cry. It was this…this high-pitched little wail. And then, I saw something move near the opening of one of the tents, and this tiny kid climbed out. A little girl, probably not more then three, carrying a doll and a blanket. I dropped my sword, but it didn’t matter. She took one look at me and ran off. Straight into one of the runes.”

“Shit.” Davius watched Mjoll look up at him with tired eyes. He wanted to hold her, to wrap his arms around her and try his best to give her some sort of comfort. But he wasn’t sure Mjoll wanted that. He wouldn’t have, when he’d told her the story of his darkest hour, that night on the shore. He didn’t want absolution for what he’d done. There was none. But understanding? That he could give. He could try, anyway. “What was a baby doing in a bandit camp?”

“I don’t know.” Mjoll picked the bottle of wine back up, rolling the neck in the palms of her hands. “But that night made a lot of things clear. For me. I wasn’t fighting for justice anymore; I was the worst sort of executioner. Of people whose stories I didn’t know. Who had no trial. My brother and parents had their lives before them, yeah, lives that didn’t deserve to be cut short. But so did that little girl.”

“Wait-“

Davius tried to argue, but Mjoll either didn’t hear or wasn’t ready to stop talking, because she carried on. She threw her hands around as she spoke, and the wine sloshed in the green bottle. “Who else? Had I killed anyone else by mistake? Innocent people who’d just gotten in the way? Did they have families? How many children were left alone because of me? Even the damned bandits – who was I to decide their lives had no meaning, that no one depended on them? _That’s_ why I stopped. _That’s_ why I ended up in Riften.”

“Well, that explains why Maven’s still alive. I’d wondered.” Davius was silent for moment or two, and nodded. “I see, I do. And I can’t lie and say I don’t feel something for that kid. And families…all families,” he said, watching pain sear Mjoll’s eyes – her wet, red-rimmed eyes. Anger rose in his chest. The weight she’d carried all those years, it never should have been hers. He took a breath and forced it back down. “They’re important.”

“But, your life, your brother’s, your parents’…I can’t speak to the grand scheme of things, but to me, I weigh that heavier. If I let someone – Sarthis – if I let him go, who else gets killed? Balimund’s kid? Dinya? She goes into the Ratway unarmed, you know. And it – I still say what Sarthis did was as bad as murder, and I _will_ not have it in my town.”

“But you use skooma to get to sleep, you told me-“

“I know. And I can control it, but that’s not the point. Well, it is, sort of. I _can_ control it. I have work, a family, friends,” he said, and glanced at Mjoll. He wanted to say ‘you’ but wasn’t sure that would be true after their argument or conversation, whatever it was. “I’m not getting hooked on skooma, and even if I did, I have the money to buy it. What Sarthis did, it took away the free will of Riften’s most vulnerable. Could have turned them into monsters. I won’t stand for that.”

“And,” he said, “I won’t stand for anyone hurting someone I…someone I care about. You want to save everyone, and I love that. I respect it. But I don’t feel the same way. You’re my priority. Riften’s my priority.”

Mjoll stared at him with half-closed, flinty eyes and shook her head.

Davius sighed. He knew getting her to see his side of things would be tough. “Do you really trust Maven to take care of them?”

Mjoll rolled her eyes. “No, but it isn’t-“

“It _is_ our decision to make, Mjoll. When the jarl is just as crooked as-“

He broke off and massaged his temples with his thumbs. He understood. As much as he hated to admit it, he understood – law and order meant something to Mjoll, more than it ever meant to him. And Mjoll was willing to fight corruption with honor, leading by example, something Davius was far too impatient to try.

But the more Davius searched Mjoll’s face – her pinched mouth and the dark pink circles rising on her cheeks – the more certain he was that something else was wrong. She’d been staring daggers at him far too long, even before they’d started talking. And besides, she’d been mad at _herself_ for the little girl’s death, mad at _herself_ for killing the guard. Not him.

But sweet fucking Dibella, was she mad at him now.

“Is- is that all? I get the feeling there’s something else.”

Mjoll jumped up from her chair and grabbed the rest of her piece of toast. She stood over her trash bin and slowly pulverized the crunchy bread into tiny crumbs. “I just told you I was a murderer and you figure there must be more?”

“ _You’re not a murderer_.” Davius struggled to keep his voice level, but it was…difficult. What Mjoll agonized over was perfectly clear to him. How could she not see it? “That guard knew what he was getting into. And the fault for that child’s death lies on whatever morons decided it was a good idea to keep a baby in a fucking bandit camp.”

“But that’s-“ Mjoll sighed and shook her head. “You’re right. We’re not going to see eye to eye on this. But when I said we needed to talk about what happened at the warehouse, it wasn’t about killing Sarthis. This is the last I want to say about that, for tonight, at least: you heard my story…your priorities used to be mine. That used to be me, and I even though I don’t agree, not anymore, I can’t judge you either. Not when I’ve been there, done what you’ve done. Or worse,” she said, holding up her hands to cut off Davius’s objection. “But there _is_ something else: nothing went according to plan, and I need an explanation for that.”

Davius frowned. “But I thought that was what we were just talking about, me killing instead of-“

“No, not that. I thought we were there to eliminate their product. That we’d call the guards when the thugs were taken care of, immobilized. That’s what I thought, because _that’s what you told me._ ” Davius watched her eyes shift over his face, watching for confirmation, a hint that she’d been right.

_Fuck it._

She looked away for a moment and then back, a small smile hovering over her lips. “You said you’d scoped out the warehouse and knew where the crew were posted, where the skooma was, where Sarthis and his guard hung out. But when I got to the back, you’d taken care of them all. How did that happen? I don’t believe for a second you missed all that in your recon. You’re better than that.”

Davius cringed under the force of her glare, but said nothing. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“Did you do all that on purpose, so I wouldn’t have to fight?”

_Fuck_. Not four hours ago he’d patted himself on the back for knowing something Aerin didn’t – trying to control Mjoll was a shit idea. And what did he do? The exact same thing. For different reasons, but he doubted Mjoll would see it that way.

“Do you have so little confidence in me? I’m used to being underestimated. Maven does it all the time. And there was Dirge, and that Orc, but not _you._ I thought you-“

“Dunmer. A Dunmer you shouldn’t have had to fight. I should have. And if I hadn’t kicked my dagger halfway across the damned warehouse, I would have.”

Mjoll glared, and a corner of her mouth twitched before she jerked it back down in a stern frown. “Davius, we’ve sparred, and I’ve beaten you. And you didn’t let me win, either. I can tell. They were fair fights. So why not let me do my part?”

“You don’t think I- Mjoll, I have _every_ confidence in you,” Davius said, and leaned back in his chair, remembering his fantasies of her on the battlefield, at his side charging the enemy. Together. “I’ve thought of asking you to join the guild. And I would, just to have you at my back. But then…then I change my mind. Because the thought of you in danger scares me.”

He stood and ran a finger over the scars below her eye. “It scares me more than anything Maven could throw at me. More than dragons. More than my own death. And if I’m scared of you getting hurt, it’s not pretty. I’m not focused. And when I’m not focused, I do stupid things. Like kicking a dead fucking body and my dagger with it, so I don’t have it when I need it.”

“Well, maybe that’s something _you_ should work on. I held my own.” Mjoll stood still, apparently unmoved. “But you gave me a non-job on purpose. You wanted to make me _think_ I was contributing, _feel like_ I was contributing. Like I was part of the mission. But I wasn’t. I was superfluous, and you _knew_ it. That’s humiliating, Davius.”

Davius tried to see it her way, and he was surprised to find he did it with no difficulty. The first real shame he’d felt all night sank like a stone in his gut. “Yeah, saying it like that sounds bad.”

He attempted a smile and was a little surprised when she returned it. Tentative, and still a little sharp, but a smile nonetheless. “It does. Don’t fucking do it again.”

“Can’t promise that, Mjoll,” Davius said, relief starting to flood his chest. He could work with this. He could make this right. He took her hands in his and was almost afraid she’d snatch hers away, but she pulled him closer instead.

“You’re going to have to. Remember when you caught me asking questions about you, grilling Keerava about who you are, where you’re from? You said you liked it. Well, I like that you care about me. About my safety. You are who you are, you said that, too, yeah?” She pulled back and looked into his eyes, waiting for his nod to continue. “Well, I am who I am. And maybe I can accept what you do and how you think. But I can’t be with someone who doesn’t _see_ me. Doesn’t understand me. Even if your intentions are…”

She shivered, and nearly spat the next word. “ _Noble_.”

Davius snorted. “Chivalrous, I’d say. I thought you’d be all over that.”

“I thought so too,” she grumbled, her eyes narrowing back into a glare. “But like you also said, I’ve got a chivalrous warrior at my beck and call, and he’s never slept upstairs. Not even once.”

Davius cringed again, remembering his cold, cruel words. He couldn’t muster an excuse, other than he’d seen the disgust in Mjoll’s eyes – disgust over _his_ actions –  and reacted automatically, lashing out in fear more than anger. But he couldn’t excuse insulting the woman he loved. And if he wanted her to love him back... “Mjoll, I’m-“

“I know. You’re sorry for what you said, and you should be. But,” she said, reaching back for the bottle of wine on the kitchen table, “you’re not completely wrong: you are who you are. I can’t pretend to be happy with what you do, but you’re right. It’s _you_. It’s you I want. It’s you I...”

She broke off with a blush, and took a sip of wine. Davius gritted his teeth, holding himself back from interrupting, demanding to know what she’d meant to say.

“And eventually,” she continued, offering Davius the bottle of wine again, “I’m going to have to make a decision: is how I feel about you enough?”

This time he accepted. Davius drank the heady wine and nodded. Yes, he could work with that. Given time, he could win her over, make her see…

“That’s fair, I suppose. But-“

“Don’t shield me again. That’s a dealbreaker, Davius. Even more than the thieving and…whatever else you do. Don’t lie to me. Don’t let me win. Don’t keep me in the dark, even if you think it’s for my own good. _Especially_ ,” she snarled, glaring over the bottle, “if you think it’s for my own good. That’s how you treat a child. And I’m not a child. I’m a warrior. A shieldmaiden, and I don’t even use a fucking shield. If you want me to accept you, accept all of you, I need your word that you’ll do the same for me.”

Davius rocked back a little at the sheer force of her anger, but she was right. How dare he think himself the proper judge of her own best interests? No wonder she was pissed. But still…

He thought about how he felt back in the warehouse, when he’d lost his weapon. Mjoll had fought well, Davius had no argument on that score. And if she wasn’t his heart – _his whole fucking heart_ – he’d want her fighting at his side any day.

But…

_Given time, I can make this work. I can_. “You have decisions to make. I do, too.”

Mjoll nodded and set the bottle aside. “But tonight isn’t the time for that. It’s late, and we’re tired. And with the guards bound to be on extra patrol, you shouldn’t leave until morning. Aerin’s in Windhelm, and won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest.”

“Morning?” Davius peeked around the corner at Aerin’s bedroom. “Are you sure? Won’t you be worried about your, ah…”

“We’re not teenagers, are we? And anyway, people call me Mjoll the Lioness, not Mjoll the untouched. My reputation lies with my sword, not with the man I take to my bed.” She turned and took a few steps toward the stairs at the back of the kitchen. She stopped and looked over her shoulder, a smile lighting her face. “Well?”

Davius stood on the spot, a million thoughts flooding his brain at once. Had he missed something? Mjoll’s emotions that evening had run the gamut between angry and sad. And a little sweet mixed in, just a little. He’d seen what she felt for him in her eyes, hovering around her smile. But this? This, he’d not expected. He picked up the bottle Mjoll had abandoned and sloshed it around. No, she’d not drunk the whole thing, not even half.

“Davius…”

Mjoll’s smile faded a little, and Davius shook away his confusion. He must have missed something, but damned if he was going to miss anything else; if there _was_ anything to figure out, it could wait another day. He caught up with Mjoll in one step and hurried her up the stairs, one arm wrapped around the curve of her waist.

 


	5. And I Am Breathless Without You

The next morning, Mjoll awakened to find Davius’s eyes on hers. It wasn’t nearly as creepy as she’d thought it would be. Not that she’d given it much thought, but she liked novels – romantic novels – and too often after a night of passion, the heroine would open her eyes to find her hero staring at her, or dreamily stroking her hair.

No thank you.

Davius’s eyes weren’t dreamy, but narrowed and searching. Puzzled, even. Plus, he’d kept his hands to himself.

“The sun’s shining in the window. I missed it rise.”

“You rise with the sun, then?” She grinned and stretched, feeling sleepier than she usually did in the mornings. Then again, they hadn’t slept much, last night. She wasn’t sure what time it was, but between their long argument and even longer reconciliation, she couldn’t think they’d gotten more than three hours, tops. “That might be more of a problem than your occupation.”

Davius stared at the sunlit window. He either didn’t hear her joke or didn’t think it was funny. Mjoll hoped it was the former.

“I’m usually up before then. Way before. It’s dark, and I’m…up. And there’s shovels, clinking against the walls. I hear it, breaking through: _tink, tink, tink_. And scratching. Skeever claws. And then this..I don’t know, a whoosh, sort of rustling hiss. A guttering torch at the end of a long, empty hallway.”

Mjoll lay back on her pillow and watched his face. His eyes were distant, but warm. No trace of the stranger she’d seen in the warehouse.

“I can’t go back to sleep, ‘cause I have to wait. Wait for whatever’s at the end of that hallway. It’s so…slow. I know it’s coming, but I can’t stop it. I just know…I know it’s going to find me before the sun comes up. And I can’t wait there, in the dark. I can’t.” Davius took a long, deep breath and looked back at Mjoll. “I sleep in the cistern anyway, so I don’t even know…but I have to get up. I just go up to the crypt and wait. I watch the sunrise, then.”

Mjoll could only imagine, but she figured her imagination barely scratched the surface. War wasn’t easy, nor should it be. But once the war was won, who counted the cost of the people left behind? Not only the dead, but the living. “Nightmares?”

“No, nightmares would be easy – skooma‘s gift to me is a dreamless sleep. But I’m awake when I hear it, and if I’m awake, I have to wait.” Davius blinked several times and seemed to shake himself out of his daze. He kissed her forehead. “I have to wait. I really hear it, Mjoll. And I’m not delusional. I know it’s not real. I know I’m not underground, waiting on the enemy. But in those hours before the sun rises…”

“You’re back.”

She felt him nod against her hair. He slid an arm under her back, and she nestled against his shoulder. She had nightmares, still. Mzinchaleft, her brother…he died again and again in her dreams. She’d go for days or weeks or months with nothing, and then one night she’d wake up crying, the little girl with her doll and blanket torn apart by lightning, and her own laughter ringing in her ears.

But Davius had been in the Legion for fourteen years, enough time for his nightmares to conquer the sun. Invade his waking mind. She thought back to the night before, the smile on his face as he’d killed Sarthis.

“Would talking about it help?”

“I don’t know.” He kissed her forehead again. “I know that’s what we tell everyone. ‘Talk about it. If it’s out of your head, you can deal with it better.’ But I don’t know anyone who’s said it helps. It’s just…it’s not one or the other, it’s not in or out. It’s both. It’s out of our heads, but it’s floating ‘round where we live and work at the same time. Hovering over the people we love,” he said, and lay back on his own pillow, staring at the ceiling. “Hurting them.”

“I know you want to help. But I’m...afraid. You are _good_ , Mjoll. A good person. You want to be good, want to believe you can make the world a better place, and that’s beautiful. I don’t want you to lose that. What I’ve done…what I’ve seen _good_ people do –  in the service of what they called righteousness – I’m afraid it would eat you alive.”

Mjoll shuddered and nodded. Something clicked during their argument the night before, something that surprised her. His smile as he’d killed Sarthis hadn’t bothered her near as much as the look on his face – the shame, the terror – when he realized he’d lost his dagger and couldn’t protect her.

That he saw _her_ as someone who needed protection. At the same time, she understood why. How many people had he seen die during the war? How many had died on his watch, under his protection? “Don’t underestimate me, Davius. Please. I’m strong enough to handle more than you think. But if I ever thought you found me weak…”

“It’s not weakness to have your heart broken by a sick and twisted world. Never weak,” he said, and raised up on his elbow again, his eyes searching hers. But this time, his were clear and light, and something shone, there. Something that made Mjoll smile. “And last night, I didn’t hear the shovels or the torches. Or the screams – my own or the Stormcloak who got in my way. I didn’t see the sun rise. I didn’t hear noises from the town, and it’s at least mid-morning. And, I didn’t need skooma to get to sleep.”

He smiled and kissed her mouth, and lay back down on his pillow. Mjoll wrapped her arms around his chest and snuggled against his body. She knew about the skooma, and knew he only used it at night, to keep nightmares at bay, as he’d said before. But to have heard about it and to live through it were two different things. He’d had one peaceful night at her side. Could she give him more? Could she live with herself if she chose to try?

And, could she handle the first time he didn’t make it through the night and woke her, terrified and shaking, waiting for enemies who would never come?  

She lifted her head, expecting to find his blue eyes fixed on the ceiling, but they were closed. “Davius?”

Nothing but deep, even breathing. He’d fallen asleep again.

She had decisions to make, she’d told him last night. Could she live with herself if she, Mjoll the Lioness, Riften’s protector, got in bed with the master of the Thieves Guild?

Apparently, yes. Literally, at least.

Could she keep the promises she’d made to herself knowing that the man she’d chosen to love lived by a different code? She wasn’t sure. Davius’s smile as he gutted Sarthis flashed behind her eyes. And then, Balimund’s happy dance. Talen-Jei’s look of near hero-worship. The children of Honorhall, who seemed much happier now that Grelod was gone. When she’d asked Constance about it, the new director told her Davius had convinced Grelod to retire.

Something else Mjoll hadn’t been able to do.

She thought back on their argument last night, and what finally made her see the end of it: he was more than one thing. He was more than the man who killed Sarthis. More than the man who skirted the law, took it into his own hands. And Mjoll wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, and not nearly as good as Davius made her out to be. She’d wanted to kill Sarthis, herself. She wanted to kill Maven every damn day. Not a day went by when hatred for that woman didn’t twist her heart into a black, writhing thing that-

She took a deep breath. She could be good for Davius. And Davius could be good for her. He could handle Maven. The more Mjoll thought about it, the more she thought that maybe, _just maybe_ …he was right – about Maven. Maybe someone like her only responded to someone like Davius. And if Maven could be handled, who was Mjoll to say that Davius’s methods weren’t sound? Just different from her own.

She would be free, then. Free to help Davius make Riften a better place. A beautiful, peaceful place.

She should get up and start the day. She should. But Davius’s arm tightened around her and he murmured her name in his sleep. Mjoll settled back down and closed her eyes again. The day could wait.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last scene was inspired by one in Peaky Blinders, if any of you who watch think it sounds a little familiar. 
> 
> As you guys can see, if you read this far, this is Davius and Mjoll's story. I left a lot out, like what fresh hell went down with Maven. Because something definitely did, and it deserves to be told.Maybe it’s fuel for Nano in November, along with a few other things.  And as always, thank you all so so much for reading. 


End file.
